Synecdochic Architecture. Tectonics for the People

Tectonics is a term that only appears in books of architecture and geology. One deals with artificial human-scale objects, the other with vast natural formations. Despite the considerable difference in scale, architectural and geological tectonics are concerned with how things stay together. Namely, the underlying reciprocities that elements – beams, columns, or Earth’s plates – establish when they form a larger structure. It is a field that interests architects because it focuses on the poetic expression of the act of construction as a necessity of representation, in which structural relations are made visible or disguised. The experiment of the Design/build workshop made architecture students see their design through the eyes of a τέκτων (tektōn - carpenter), whose work typically differs from that of the stonemason and the metal worker because it is concerned with discrete, linear elements with little plasticity.